Trades

You trade time with your family for time at work, or the other way around.

You trade healthy food for fast food, or the other way around.

You trade a yearly vacation for a new car, or the other way around.

True, you can focus on win-win situations, but even those are more like win-win-lose-a-lot-more than purely win-win. Like even if you work as a photographer, your dream job, making gobs of cash, you’re still giving up the career as a rocket scientist, marine biologist, or high school teacher.

You can’t have it all, so you trade.

Some trades are more explicit than others, like when you hand over a few thousand dollars for a new TV. But everything’s a trade, whatever you do, whatever decision you make.